With the extensive penetration of wireless communications, people may be contacted through their mobile terminals virtually anywhere and at any time. Given such communication freedom, wireless users may want to control or otherwise restrict the calls they receive, especially when traveling, for both economy and convenience. Although the wireless users may use caller identification to screen calls, the caller identification information may not be available. Further, the caller identification is not received unless the call is received, and thus, the wireless user will be disrupted upon receiving the incoming call. When traveling, wireless users may want to restrict when calls will be received, or if calls will be received. The wireless user may prefer to receive only business-related calls while on business trips, and only personal calls while on vacation. When traveling in different time zones, certain time limitations may be desirable for incoming calls based on sleep or work requirements. If calls are blocked or forwarded to voicemail, it would be beneficial to provide the caller with information indicating why the call was handled in such a manner. Based on such information, it would be further beneficial to provide the caller with options in light of the wireless user's situation or location. These options could include leaving a voicemail, continuing with the call, or being forwarded to another person or telephony device.
The wireless user may also want to avoid roaming or long distance charges for all or certain calls, depending on the wireless user's current location. Although techniques are available that allow wireless users to have their calls forwarded to other telephony terminals or to voicemail, the configuration requirements to implement forwarding are often manually intensive. As such, the wireless users often forget or do not bother to go through the extra effort to set up call forwarding.
In essence, the location of a wireless user often dictates the wireless user's desires for receiving incoming calls. As such, there is a need for a technique to allow wireless users to efficiently and effectively control how incoming calls are processed and ultimately routed based on the wireless user's location. There is a further need to provide such processing in an automated fashion, wherein the processing rules may automatically change based on the user's location, without requiring the wireless user to constantly reconfigure the processing rules when moving from one location to another. There is a further need to provide information indicating why the call is being processed as it is to the caller, as well as provide the caller with options on how to proceed in light of the wireless user's situation or location.